How Dare He?

I'm serious. Read this in total (snippet below) and tell me it doesn't toast your cookies to have this right-wing Yalie (oh, wait, we keep hearing how colleges are the bastion of the lofty lefties! However did he slip through?) say we are the ones dismissing soldiers. I bet like hell I've written a LOT more letters and taken part in far more activities (direct as well as indirect) in support of the troops to make sure they get adequate benefits than this New Haven pile of dung.

From Joshua at Gadflyer:

There must be a shortage of conservative commentators who can put together a cogent and honest argument. Today the Los Angeles Times--that liberal rag--debuted David Gelernter, their new columnist, and boy is he full of it.

Gelernter--a Yale computer science professor and a Weekly Standard contributor, takes every hawkish smear and distortion against liberals and puts it all in a bucket, never skimping on the paté, in this doozy of a column:

Sgt. 1st Class Paul Ray Smith of the U.S. Army was the first Iraq war soldier to win the Congressional Medal of Honor -- posthumously. On April 4, 2003, a group of American soldiers building a POW compound were slammed by a surprise attack. Smith organized a defense, then moved under fierce fire to an unprotected machine gun. He kept firing as the wounded were brought to safety and the attack driven off. Meanwhile he was hit, fatally.

OK, a heroic military ideal. It's a good start--whips us right into a patriotic lather. But I bet those damn liberals are somehow going to disparage his legacy. You watch--that's what they do.

Even Iraq war opponents and Bush-haters say they honor Smith's courage. But their "honor" is mostly a sham. Unless you understand what drives a man like Sgt. Smith to become a soldier, the honor you do him is honor with a footnote (he was a brave man, but obviously some kind of weirdo).

Our "honor" is no more of a sham than your "argument." And the liberal footnote reads, 'he was a brave man, and what a waste that he was killed at a young age in a disastrous war launched under false pretences.'

Here in academia, my colleagues seem determined to turn American soldiers into an out-of-sight, out-of-mind servant class who are expected to do their duty and keep their mouths shut.

No, sir. Not unless your colleagues at Yale were all big rightwing proponents of this war. And I've met more than a few fatcat rightwingers at Yale.

Speak for your own damned self. When there's a local drive to do something for a soldier, I'm there with something. When I see legislation designed to hurt our soldiers or their families, I'm on the phone, burning shoe rubber, writing and faxing. I remind our lofty legislators that there are real people behind these uniforms we send to war that they so like to pose with.